Lisa Madigan asks for U.S. probe of Chicago police

Greg Hinz On Politics

The Illinois attorney general's letter cites both the Laquan McDonald shooting and the Jon Burge case.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan today jumped with all limbs into the Laquan McDonald shooting, asking for a U.S. Department of Justice probe into "whether practices by the Chicago Police Department violate" federal law.

In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Madigan asked for an investigation into the CPD's use of force, the adequacy of its internal investigation of officers and the adequacy of its training.

Madigan said the investigation by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is necessary and appropriate given not only the McDonald shooting but abuse by former CPD Cmdr. Jon Burge.

The letter also references a series of other shootings by police officers and the conviction of former officer Jerome Finnegan for seeking to have a fellow cop murdered.

Four hundred reviews of shootings since 2007 by the Independent Police Review Authority, the city agency that reviews the department, "found only one to be unjustified," Madigan's letter says. And other data show that over the past five years, white complainants were seven times more likely to have complaints sustained by the city than African-Americans, even as African-Americans filed three times more complaints.

She concludes, "An investigation into whether there are patterns and practices of civil rights violations by CPD is vital to bring about the systemic change that is necessary here."

"Trust in the Chicago Police Department is broken," Madigan said in a statement. "Chicago cannot move ahead and rebuild trust between the police and the community without an outside, independent investigation."

While "the vast majority" of officers serve honorably, "the children in all of Chicago's communities deserve to grow up in a city in which they are protected," she added.